1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a droplet ejecting apparatus, an electro-optic device, an electronic apparatus, and a droplet ejecting method. Specifically, the present invention relates to a droplet ejecting apparatus suitable for applying a liquid material to regions periodically arranged in a color filter substrate, a color matrix display, or the like, an electro-optic device, an electronic apparatus, and a droplet ejecting method.
2. Related Art
For example, a spin coating method, which is a thin-film forming method, is generally used for forming a thin film. In the spin coating method, a liquid material is applied in the form of droplets to a substrate, and then the substrate is rotated to spread the liquid material over the entire surface of the substrate by centrifugal force, thereby forming a thin film. The thickness of the thin film is controlled by controlling the rotational speed, the rotation holding time, and the viscosity of the liquid material.
However, in the spin coating method, the supplied liquid material is mostly scattered, and thus a large amount of the liquid material is required to increase waste and manufacturing cost. Since the substrate is rotated, the liquid material flows outward by centrifugal force, and thus the thickness of a peripheral region tends to become larger then that of an inner portion, thereby causing nonuniformity in thickness.
On the above-described background, a droplet ejecting method such as an ink jet method has recently been proposed, and an ink jet apparatus for carrying out the coating method has been proposed. The ink jet apparatus is capable of disposing a predetermined amount of a liquid material at a desired position, and is thus suitably, mainly used for forming a thin film.
The ink jet apparatus can be used for, for example, manufacturing a color filter substrate. A color filter can be formed by landing inks of R (red), G (green), and B (blue) in a predetermined pattern using the ink jet apparatus.
A known example of a technique for manufacturing a color filter using the ink jet apparatus is the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-248926. The technique disclosed in this document comprises ejecting a R color ink by first coloring means (ink jet head) and drying the ejected color ink (first step), ejecting a G color ink by second coloring means (ink jet head) and drying the ejected color ink (second step), and ejecting a B color ink by third coloring means (ink jet head) and drying the ejected color ink (third step) to form a color filter.
However, the above-mentioned related art has the problem that the same step is must be repeated three times for drawing in the three colors R, G, and B on a substrate, thereby increasing the number of the steps and manufacturing cost.